Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/51

1551.] right, the difference so far was as between the honest watch-dog and a crew of prowling wolves.

The dominant faction had dragged on for two years, through mean tyranny and paltry peculation. The time had come when, no longer able to continue their ill ways unmolested, they were to venture into open crime.

The Duke of Somerset had neglected the debts of the realm, till they were past retrieval. He had rushed into expensive and unsuccessful wars, crippled the revenue, and continued the debasement of the currency. He had brought the country into discredit abroad; and by forcing forward changes in religion for which the people were unprepared, he had thrown half England into insurrection. He had justly been deprived of the power which he had usurped and abused. Yet, for the most part, he had failed in attempts which in themselves were noble; and the Duke of Somerset might flatter himself that his own government showed brightly by the side of the scarcely less rash and more utterly ungenerous administration which had followed on his fall. Could he have recovered the Protectorate, it is not likely he would have profited by his past experience; a large vanity and a languid intellect incapacitated him for sovereign power; yet, in the face of the existing state of things, he need only be moderately blamed if he endeavoured to regain his power from the nands by which it had been wrested from him. In the past year he had provoked the jealousy and the suspicion of Warwick, by interfering in favour of Gardiner; he had